My first real cook title was Garde Manger, or Pantry Chef.
I handled all cold items, from salads to desserts at a small Italian restaurant. It was the ‘90s, so garnishing mostly meant a useless kale leaf on the plate and a sprig of mint on whipped cream.
Strawberries were sliced down to the stem and splayed like a deck of cards. Tuna tartare was layered in metal rounds and shaped into towers. Oh, and there was the obligatory chiffonade of herbs dusted around the rim of the plate.
Christ, those dishes were ugly.
A toothpick was my best friend. I ran it through raspberry purées and vinaigrettes. I swirled it around the crème fraîche adorning a gazpacho. I also chewed on one when I was anxious. As a teenager handling (and spinning) more plates than nearly anyone else, trying to decipher orders screamed from 30 feet away and around a corner, your body pumps adrenaline.
Did the chef ask for tiramisu or soufflé? Are my glass salad dishes chilling? Where are my anchovies? Wait, no. We don’t even make a soufflé! What am I thinking of? Soup? No, tiramisu.
All of this races through my mind during Saturday’s dinner service while a server asks me to slip him a piece of peanut butter ice cream pie. I don’t blame him. It’s so good.
We took care of those who took care of us and he was a good guy. The next time he walked by my station, I nodded my head towards the walk-in door, and he knew there was a piece of pie waiting for him.
The chef hollered my name and threw a tinfoil-wrapped potato in a perfect spiral to me. He told me to microwave it. Baked potatoes weren’t even on our menu, but a special guest requested one. So, the chef wanted to pump this thing full of electromagnetic radiation to speed up the process.
I didn’t know that’s what microwaves did. I never used one before. Turns out you’re supposed to take off the tinfoil. Suffice to say, the guest did not get his baked potato and I had to go buy a new microwave the next morning.
I’ve hated microwaves ever since.
Two years later, I was the Pastaio — the pasta maker and cook. I had just finished making the fresh pasta and bringing it to the restaurant. A dishwasher was promoted to take my place as the pantry chef, which meant we added another kid to wash dishes.
It was my turn to haze him in the same exact way all of us were before him.
“Kid, do me a favor,” I shouted to him.
His neck snapped up, his arms deep in gray, soapy water. He is attentive but pensive.
“Go in the walk-in, stand on a bucket, and grab your ankles.”
He looks confused, but it’s his first day and he doesn’t want to do the wrong thing. So, he heads into the frigid steel box, not to be seen again until someone goes in and tells him to come out.
We all loved this, mostly because each and every one of us fell for the same stupid prank. None of us understood the implications at the time, and no one cared to explain them. It was only when it happened to the next person a year later that you finally got it.
During service, another cook walked by the dish station and asked, “how’s your asshole?”
Kitchen culture in the ‘90s was something that could not be fully understood by those who had not experienced it. You’re all together in the shit for unreasonably long hours and under difficult conditions. You go in the weeds, someone picks you up. You drop a sizzle plate of crab-stuffed lobster on the floor, though, and the chef might wing his tongs at you.
In July, when it’s 100 degrees of complete, oppressive humidity — and no air conditioning — it’s literally hell. So people drank, smoked, snorted lines of coke, or made inappropriate jokes to get through the night. Others had their own way of handling things.
It’s Saturday, July 4 at 8:00. The dinner rush is in full swing when we hear the screen door slam shut. The head and sous chefs were headed into the alley, and we all knew what that meant: they were about to fight.
They were brothers, fiery redheaded Italians who could not have been less alike. Donnie was the older brother and head chef. He was calm, cool, and composed. Almost elegant. Thirty tickets could be hanging from his window and he wouldn’t miss a beat, even if they were all fired at the same time.
He moved at the same steady pace, plating the dish, wiping its edges, and garnishing it. The rest of us were moving beyond at a pace that seemingly bent the laws of physics to keep pace. Sam, the younger brother and sous chef, was more like the rest of us.
Sam had lots of energy and was confident, not the worst qualities for a cook. He was also headstrong — or capatost’, as my Calabrian dad would say. He never showed it on his face, but you could tell it annoyed the shit out of Donnie.
Their love-hate dynamic was felt by all, no more so than after that screen door slammed shut.
The brothers were fighting behind the restaurant, and we went about our business. In the past, we peeked, or even went outside to watch them fight, but it always ended the same, and it was best to just let it be.
The new kid looked up and around. I pointed down, indicating he should return to work.
No more than three minutes later, Donnie walked in, unchanged in his demeanor. Shortly thereafter, Sam sheepishly made his way back into the kitchen. His lip was bloody, his eyes teary. The two went right to work like nothing happened.
They let out their aggression this way at least twice a week, and Donnie was never worse for the wear. That’s just how it went. Despite their differences, they were incredibly tight.
When you work together long enough, chemistry forms. There was a certain eloquent dance on the line, where cooks could move effortlessly around each other in the tightest spaces, but nobody ever left their station during the rush. Then there’s the dishwasher.
The kid has a bus pan overloaded with pots, pans, and dishes. To him, it made sense to walk straight up the line to deliver his clean wares. One cook unintentionally bumped into him, another nearly opened the double deck oven door on his head.
“Get the fuck out of here,” the chef screams.
He’s embarrassed, unaware that nearly all of us made the same mistake before. It’s one none of us would ever make again.
We messed with one another. Sometimes we fought. We definitely screamed at each other. We may not have even gotten along, but there was an unspoken bond that existed during service. It’s inevitable when a group of strangers is put together in a tough situation but are all aligned on the same goal.
That’s what ‘90s kitchen culture really was, in my experience.